De Montford Demolished

Sep 17 2001 21:59

Oliver Pell

Hayes, Rao, Fidgett and Kilford brushed the opposition aside in tonight's University Challenge.

The Imperial College team won the round by a margin of 140 points.

When Jeremy Paxman introduced De Montford University as the only one of the 'new' universities to make it to this stage, and Imperial College as a twice champion looking for a hat trick it became obvious who the favourites were. But last year's winners wouldn't have wanted to take victory for granted. As it was, we never really discovered whether Imperial were taking victory for granted or anything else - they simply took it.

The first half of the competition was almost entirely one sided with the Imperial team dominating the game and reaching a score in the mid one hundreds before De Montford manage to acquire a single point. De Montford passed up several opportunities after being handed starter questions answered incorrectly by Imperial but did eventually make it off the starter block and began to win some points. Despite a valiant effort however they never really made up any of the lost ground.

Particular attention from C&GCU minions (myself included) was focused on Sunil Rao (who is not only a Guildsman but was also C&G Academic Affairs Officer last year). C&GCU President Mustafa Arif, who resorted to eavesdropping on the show over a telephone line (under the cover of discussing something or another) commented that "'Imperial - Rao' was really annoying". Another C&G figure observed that he looked "ridiculously smug at the beginning of the show". Mr Rao seemed to be making a reasonable contribution (high praise...) and while piping up "Optical Character Recognition" in response to a half-finished enquiry might be considered acceptable for an ISE student knowing the Sanskrit for "love treaties" raises a few more question marks.

In the end De Montford were simply outclassed by what Mr Paxman described as a "very strong" team from Imperial but despite their shaky start they did eventually manage to struggle to the not unrespectable score of 110. Imperial College finished on 250.